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I had to go to Toronto during a heat wave instead of this coming week when the weather is going to be about as close to perfect as it gets.

By the way, did I mention that I’m one of the cool iPhone kids now?

The cable went a few months ago (even though it’s still very much here and probably will be for the foreseeable future, considering the efficiency level of Time Warner) and tonight, the land line went away. Our little slice of paradise is now an iPhone-only household.

I am so insanely busy this week that I probably won’t notice the difference except for the fact that my answering machine will never again be blinking when I get home. Not that it ever blinked much before…

Twenty-five years ago tomorrow turns out to have been a pretty major turning point for me. It was the day I resigned as General Manager of the student radio station at UNCG. In itself, this wasn’t a big deal, just the inevitable result of my having taken a position I never wanted in the first place. But it launched a chain of events that led to my dropping out of college, which was the start of a period I later referred to as the “dark years,” which included eighteen very drunken months in Greensboro, three more in Myrtle Beach, and most of my first residence in Charlotte.

Actually, resigning from the station wasn’t so much the beginning of my troubles, but the beginning of the series of events that signaled I’d let these troubles take over my life. It had been a really bad year all the way around. I had boy troubles, I’d sort of let myself get talked out of transferring to Chapel Hill for the fall semester. And I really wasn’t sure what the hell I wanted to do next. About the only things I was certain of were that I didn’t want to live in Greensboro anymore (interestingly, I’d taken my first trip to New York a couple of weeks before) and that I wasn’t going to finish the semester at UNCG.

I don’t think I’ve ever been quite as miserable as I was during the fall and winter of 1984-85, although junior high (all of it) came pretty close. In fact, I think I was pretty perpetually miserable for the next three or four years, although I was too drunk to notice most of the  time. Maybe “miserable” is the wrong word; I did manage to enjoy myself from time to time. In fact, all I really wanted to do was have a good time. But whenever I took the time to think seriously about my life, I realized I didn’t have much of one, and it got me really depressed.

That’s not to say that everything was all peaches and cream after I arose from my little fog, moved back to Greensboro, and went back to school in 1989, nor that everything was perfect during the San Francisco years. In fact, I was quite directionless for a very long time. Nor was I any less intoxicated for most of that time. But maybe age gave me the perspective to realize that things would ultimately get better. Or maybe I just “flattened out” emotionally, sort of like a lobotomy patient. I can definitely say that I’ve very actively avoided anything resembling drama in subsequent years.

It took me a long time to recover from 1984, or at least from some of the decisions I made that year. In fact, I’m still in the process of recovering from some of them. Ultimately, though, these decisions and experiences, good and bad, have led me to where I am today. My life isn’t perfect, but I generally like it, and had I not followed the path I did, there’s no telling where I might have ended up. Since I can’t really change the past and I’m not certain that I would even if I could, I’m not really sure what this babbling is all about. But that’s what I’m thinking about this Sunday night. If I come up with anything more concrete, I’ll let you know.

The hubby pretty much blew the response I was writing to this post out of the water so I’ll defer, seeing as how he made all my points better than I could have anyway.

I wish I had the attention span or the energy anymore to write anything more than a paragraph long that isn’t a paper on data formats or metadata standards or a stupid post about people who write checks at the supermarket (OK, so even that wasn’t really more than a paragraph). Sorry. I’m having one of those “nobody reads this stuff anymore so why do I bother since I obviously don’t have much to say lately” moments. It’s probably just because I’m weary from school, or maybe because I haven’t had a  good night’s sleep since Tuesday.

I promise to be less whiny later, once I’ve had a conjugal snuggle. And there’s still that exciting upcoming announcement…

In his column in today’s Chronicle, C.W. Nevius suggests that gentrification finally won the game in my old neighborhood, that it’s not a bad thing, that the results “don’t frighten anyone,” and that it “may be most vibrant and attractive neighborhood in the city.” He even goes so far as to argue that the new South of Market might provide a template for all future urban development in San Francisco.

I humbly disagree.

First, his definitions are blurry. Is Nevius talking about the new development in the eastern part of the district near the Financial District? If so, there may be some merit to his assertion that the area was something of a blank canvas, at least with respect to residential development. Indeed, very few residents were displaced here. Even so, I don’t find the results especially distinctive. But for the occasional obscured view of the water or the Bay Bridge, this high-rise jungle of sparkling new million dollar condos and big box retailers could be in just about any larger North American city. Granted, it’s perhaps a little more transit-oriented than it might have been in, say, Charlotte, and I suppose it’s not particularly unpleasant. But it’s also not particularly unique, except maybe in scale and price.

That said, the King Street/AT&T Park corridor is only part of the South of Market Area. Nevius states that “as the area fills in” that “surely residents in those areas can see that the specter of gentrification isn’t that bad.” The section west of Moscone Center, though, hasn’t been a blank slate since about 1906 when it all burned down. It’s pretty darned full already. There are, and always have been, people living there, and prior to the 1990s, many of these people were of rather modest means. Since the 1990s, a large number of these people (not to mention small businesses) have been displaced. These folks might have a slightly different perspective on the effects of gentrification in the area.

I don’t live in San Francisco anymore, and I’m not directly affected by any of this. But I do care about urban development, and I also recognize that many people look to San Francisco for a model of how their own cities might evolve. If there’s a model to follow here, though, I’d prefer that it not be this “slash and burn” style of development that erases everything (and everyone) that was there before. It’s one thing to do this to an area where there wasn’t all that much to begin with, but to superimpose this model onto an existing neighborhood seems to me the antithesis of urbanity, whether it’s done in the name of “slum clearance” in 1959 or “transit-oriented development” fifty years later.

Nevius closes by saying that he’ll “be interested in what the rest of the city looks like (in ten years). And how much it resembles the new gentrification.”

For San Francisco’s sake, I’m hoping there won’t be much resemblance at all.